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Nostalgia for Reader’s Digest

By Floyd Norris November 16, 2006 10:51 amNovember 16, 2006 10:51 am

The September 2006 cover of Reader’s Digest.

Reader’s Digest, the magazine my grandfather loved, was the kind of business you don’t see anymore. It was known for its generous employee benefits, which included a school bus to take workers home at the end of the day. When it went public in 1990, it almost immediately began paying good dividends.

Now it is going to go private, and the critics will tell us that it was a flop as a public company. A share that sold for $20 in the initial public offering will be purchased for $17.

But not so fast. Dividends do matter. Over the years, that share paid $23.515 in dividends. Even if one assumes the cash was kept in a box and not reinvested, that is a return of 4.8 percent a year before taxes. Not exactly a home run, but not a strikeout either.

These days, fashionable companies pay little if any in the way of dividends when things are good. They may trumpet the return of cash to shareholders via share repurchases, but those merely repay shareholders who flee, doing nothing for loyal investors. Instead, they allow the company to hide the dilutive effect of all the options that are handed out to executives.

There is nothing wrong with companies that choose to reinvest profits rather than pay them as dividends. But companies that repurchase shares rather than pay dividends are doing no favor for loyal investors.

This analysis fails to take into consideration the catatrosphic fall in the buying power denominated in housing prices since 1990. My guess the shareholders are getting about $2 in 1990 dollar buying power.

You’re preaching to the converted about the share repurchase scam.

I only buy shares in companies with a history of generous payouts with regular increases when profits are good.

I am 57years old,born in Iraq-Baghdad,I opened my eyes to this same world finding my father-a carpenter then-reading Reader`s Digest magazine in arabic,which was translated and reprinted in Egypt-Cairo,all his brothers,friends,colleagues and buddies in carpentry and other trades,were ,nearly,addicted on that beautifully and perfectly prepared and issued magazine,this began, as my father told me once,on somewhere before the fifties,in the days of Gen.Eisenhower presidency.The most important point I want to register here is,Reader `s Digest of those days is no more existing at all and forever…I repeat…
forever!…why? I wish if I have your post mail address to write for you all the whys..but it seems that you have lost even this intimate way of communication with your readers, out of the electronic communications of the Internet.Well,let me tell you why exactly I am sending you this E-mail;several days ago my wife received a package from (k.Burgess,vice presedent of finance national headquarters 1125 StanlySt. Montreal,QC H3B 5H5)from someone called Marisa Orsini-prize award administrator,promissing my wife of a brand new car,and 500.000.00 Dollars and so..so..so..so of things that won`t happen even in the imaginations of Walt Disney!The questions I want to ask you here ;Do you know about such people?I mean are they legal?Is this your policy today?In all cases ,either you have finished forever as a respectful magazine kings and emperors and presedents of the world, since the thirties, used to read eagerly to enjoy and to educate themselves,OR really you became in such spiritual bankruptcy that you are going through such foxy and tricky ways ,only to beg poeple attention.Where is the Readers Digest we used to read in the seventies and lending and borrowing to each other?the last time I caught a one when somebody here in windsor -ontario canada,threw 35 issues in a packet in the street-nobody threw a Readers Digest in our time in the street-well ,after I took them to my house,I discovered why they are thrown in the street,and why I ,in my turn,threw them in the very street; 60% of its content was politics,very ugly and dirty politics-30% sex,uglier than ugly porno sex,although written not pictures,and the rest were ugly ads.and now,the ugly Readers Digest is entering our houses through the mail box with fake lottery and tricky operations to steal poor people money.After 7 decades of teaching and educating all social levels of peoples in all the countries in all over the world,now suddenly you became imposters more than those pickpockets in the streets .I know..I know that this time is the time of ugliness in every field of life..but Readers Digest ,throughout 75 successive and contineouse years was the no.one magazine in the whole world,even the first and second world wars couldn`t effect on it`s primest position,what ,by GOD,happened to her?
Readers Digest send false dreams and lotteries to poor people to steal their social insurance numbers and other private informations in order to snatch thier savings-if they had any!-are you journalism of the society or it`s ticks?
I am so happy that my father and all his brothers ,friends,colleagues,neighboures and relatives had died before their beloved -QUEEN-magazine converted to a street imposter.
Send me a good and firm address,a guaranteed one I mean,so that I can send you these- SHITTY-papers of Marisa Orsini in Montreal-Canada,at least to know and be sure to what degrading and humble level you had dragged R.D.now by such a cadre whose real and specialty job,it seems,is smearing prime faces and honourful heritages,with dirty mud or shit.
Amir Toma
1389 central avenue-Windsor-Ontario-
CANADA n8y 3v3

I declare here personally,that Susan Boyle,in the next two years,will be considered internationally,the greatest singer in the whole world ,throghout the history of human being,
Why?!Because she was born out of great suffering,harsh suffering which destroyed the best years of her youth without any speck of justification.Great and long sufferings on the talented people,is,undoubtly something so constructive and promoting…just wait and see how this villager woman is going to teach what is the meaning of art and singing ,which a lot of today`s people have forgotten.
Susan Boyle ,go on,don`t stop,the whole world is waiting to see and hear your achievements,we encourage you with all of our hearts because you are gifted real,and from God.And He is waiting to see if He had gifted the right one or not.You are Edith Piaf +Um Kulthoom+Feyrooz together,so don`t disappoint us ,we are waiting.
Amir Toma-Canada

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